“Let’s be spontaneous,” I said to my husband about dinner. A Saturday night isn’t a good night for spontaneity anywhere, but I was using our trip to Copenhagen as an experiment in giving up control. I’d become so tightly wound over the last few months, crying about emails on a daily basis, and something had to give. We’d be on our way back from the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art by train, so we got off at the northernmost city stop and decided we’d walk all the way back to where we were staying, at the Hotel Ascot near Tivoli Gardens. Along the way, surely a restaurant would call out to us.

I examined posted menus from the street but was in a Goldilocks mood until we happened upon the red neon light of a place called Barabba. We didn’t know what to make of the cuisine from afar by the name, yet I was drawn toward it, and the menu proved to be Italian. Why not? We went in and were greeted kindly despite the lack of reservation and were offered some bar seats that we’d have to vacate rapidly. That would be fine. From this vantage point, we could see the open kitchen and were being served by who we would eventually (when we had wifi) find out was a co-owner. A star, apparently, of the Copenhagen dining scene. When we complimented the risotto with lovage, fermented chanterelles, and burnt leek, he looked at us with a face of shock and relief. Someone had gone online the night before and posted a review that said it tasted like socks. “If there’s one thing everyone likes,” he said to us, “it’s McDonald’s, so I’m happy not to be liked.” I wrote this down in my notes, because I too don’t want to be McDonald’s. A reminder for when the emails threatened to make me cry again.

That I was attracted by this restaurant’s light like a moth to a flame made sense when I was able to do a little googling, and I felt a pang of predictability about my tastes: Of course it’s a well-known natural wine bastion; of course it’s already on world’s 50 best radar. The “Global Brooklyn,” or whatever, working on me (in my defense, of course, I’ve lived in and am ancestrally from Brooklyn on my mother’s side). 

An Italian bartender told us on our first night in town when we wanted a nosh at 10 p.m.—a foolish New Yorker’s errand, yet we found a nearby Szechuan spot: “There is no bad food in Copenhagen, because Danes take food so seriously.” As with any generalization about a city and a people given to a tourist, we took it with a grain of salt, and also, on our brief trip, found it to be true.

On our spontaneous walks, we went to Poulette for their mapo tofu sandwich. I’d been waiting to eat it for years, ever since I first laid eyes on it through Instagram, and it met my expectations with a breading that shattered like glass upon biting in, just a perfect fry, and a nice level of spice. We ate tacos from Hija de Sánchez; cardamom buns and pumpkin-ricotta focaccia from Hart Bakery (he hadn’t yet made his silly comment when we were in town); an interestingly melty chocolate chip cookie and espresso at Orsa; tried more cardamon buns and more coffee at Democratic and Coffee Collective; tried the local Radius gin in my martini at hotel bar Josephine’s; popped into Mikkeler Beer; had a beet-bean burger at Tour; drank well-priced wines at Pompette; and ate what might have been the best bread of my life in an appetizer at Baest. (Find the full map, including these spots and all the recommendations I got, here.)

The only restaurant meals I hadn’t left up to chance were reservations at Ark and Bistro Lupa, the two Michelin green star spots by the Ark Collection, both plant-based, both serving mushroom dishes as their stars—cultivated at Funga Farm, their own operation. At each, I ordered the fullest experience; I treated money as meaningless, for vegan food is my beat!

They delivered: Lupa is more casual, and we shared dishes like a fluffy seeded Japanese milk bread dipped in silky hummus, charred cabbage with kimchi and pumpkin seed, and fried blue oyster mushrooms with chipotle barbecue sauce. At Ark, it’s a traditional tasting menu–fine dining experience—tweezers and foraging and lengthy explanations of origins and producer relationships. I ate it up, literally and figuratively: maitake with plum and ponzu; silky chawanmushi with cauliflower and chestnut; eggplant with Thai basil and shio koji; exquisitely juicy blue oyster mushroom; finishing, after multiple dessert courses, with financiers and quince (I think!) jelly and a pour of Malus Danica local apple ice wine…

The wines at both were incredibly paired and surprising, including more than a few Danish selections, so I talked to the restaurant group’s sommelier, Thomas Hjort, about how he approaches his list and pairing with vegan dishes. (Yes, the podcast is back in 2026—please be patient while I work out the kinks. Embed visible on web.)

After we left, on the walk back to the hotel where a warm bath awaited, I typed tipsily into my Notes app, "SUSTAINABILITY IS PERFORMANCE UNTIL IT IS RULE.” 

The experiments in spontaneity continued to serve us well outside these event dinners, like when we popped into the shop New Mags, that sells magazines and more coffee-table-esque books, and I got two issues from Magazine B, as well as the most magnificently oversize tote embroidered with their logo, and the owner recommended Bottega Barlie to us. As a rule, I don’t stand on lines to wait for a meal, so one of the places I figured we’d skip was Atelier September, which was down the block. Here we sauntered in easily to have the most exquisite omelet, as well as oysters with a gooseberry mignonette. After this, we went into the design store Frama, where I didn’t get any housewares but did buy their St. Paul’s Apothecary herbarium hand cream, because I couldn’t resist its stunning orange tube.

One morning at breakfast I’d been served a soft-boiled egg in an egg cup, and I sent my mom a picture of it. “I’ve always wanted an egg in an egg cup,” I wrote, and she replied that my grandma used to make them for me. I started crying at the little bistro we’d gone to a couple of times, a bistro not photogenic and with no lines near the hotel, because I don’t remember this but don’t doubt it for a second. I have what is sometimes, to me, a strange but resilient desire to be treated like a noble little princess when it comes to my meals—I plate my bowls of yogurt as though they’ll be photographed, even when I’m just going to gobble them up—and it’s always apparently because my grandma did something like serve me soft-boiled eggs in egg cups. At the gift shop in the Louisiana Museum, I got myself one.

Copenhagen indulged the noble little princess within me fully, from the eggs to the mushrooms to the wine to the design. I put no pressure on the trip, and that was the right decision. Maybe I will continue to be loosey-goosey, to go with the flow, no crying at emails… It is January, after all… even a princessy control freak can dream of her higher self with the year ahead of her.

I put more photos on Instagram: series 1, series 2.